Independent Evaluation of the NRC Expert Deployment/NORCAP Response to the Nepal 2015 Earthquake
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Independent Evaluation of the NRC Expert Deployment/NORCAP Response To The Nepal 2015 Earthquake Jock Baker and Uma Narayanan MARCH 2016 | INDEPENDENT EVALUATION REPORT Independent Evaluation of the NRC Expert Deployment/NORCAP Response To The Nepal 2015 Earthquake | March 2016 © Norwegian Refugee Council Contact: [email protected] Table of Contents 1 Executive Summary 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Methodology 1 1.3 Main Findings 2 1.4 Summary of Recommendations 3 2 List of abbreviations and acronyms 4 3 Introduction 5 3.1 Evaluation Purpose, Scope and Use 5 3.2 NORCAP Background 5 3.3 The 2015 Nepal Earthquake 5 3.4 Humanitarian context in Nepal 6 3.5 NORCAP Response to the Nepal Earthquake 7 3.6 Timeline for the NORCAP Response 7 3.7 Surge Capacities for the Nepal Earthquake Response 7 4 Methodology 9 5 Main Findings 12 5.1 Relevance 13 5.2 Efficiency 15 5.3 Effectiveness and Outcomes 16 5.4 Sustainability 20 5.5 Value Added and Value for Money 21 6 Conclusions 22 7 Recommendations 23 7.1 NORCAP 23 7.2 NORCAP and Host Agencies 24 8 Lessons 25 FIGURES Figure 1 – Earthquakes in Nepal during the last Century ............................................................. 6 Figure 2 - Contract duration of deployees ...................................................................................12 Figure 3- Percentage of deployees seconded to different Host Agencies .................................13 Figure 4 - Number of Deployments for type of Specialisation ....................................................14 Figure 5 – Number of deployees by gender and citizenship .......................................................17 Figure 6 – Performance Evaluation Results for NORCAP Deployments .....................................19 Figure 7 – MFA Allocations for the Nepal Earthquake Response ...............................................21 TABLES Table 1 - Number of Key Informant by Category ............................................................................ 9 Table 2 – Outcomes from NORCAP Deployments ........................................................................20 ANNEXES Annex 1 – NRC Evaluation Terms of Reference ......................................................................... - 1 - Annex 2 – Methodological Notes and Interview Guide .............................................................. - 7 - Annex 3 – Case Studies of NORCAP Deployments: UNICEF, UN Women and IOM ................ - 11 - Annex 4 – Agenda for the NORCAP Nepal Earthquake Evaluation Working Session ............ - 17 - Annex 5 – Timeline of NORCAP Deployments (April 25 - December 31, 2015 ..................... - 18 - Annex 6 – List of Interviewees .................................................................................................. - 19 - Annex 7 – Key Reference Documents ...................................................................................... - 22 - Annex 8 – Team Member Profiles............................................................................................. - 23 - Acknowledgements The support and engagement of staff from NRC/NORCAP HQ and representatives of host agencies based in Nepal during this evaluation was much appreciated. The Steering Committee for this evaluation and in particular the focal point for this evaluation, Hilde Faugli, facilitated the process at every stage by helping to organize interviews and provided support to the evaluation team whenever needed. The open dialogue with the Steering Committee, key informants during this review and workshop participants was very constructive. Their honesty and willingness to explore learning about what could be improved was critical to understanding the context, especially given the limitations of the scope of the assessment and analysis. This is an independent evaluation and the authors assume responsibility for all opinions, recommendations and any inadvertent errors that may appear in this report. ******** Cover photo: REUTERS / Adnan Abidi 1 Executive Summary 1.1 Introduction This independent evaluation provides an opportunity to learn from NORCAP’s response to the 2015 Nepal earthquake, including the value-added of using deployments when compared to other types of interventions. This evaluation covers selected NRC/NORCAP deployments to United Nations (UN) organisations and the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) in Nepal between 25 April 2015, the date of the earthquake, and 31 December 2015. The main users of the results of this evaluation are staff in the Expert Deployment/NORCAP department to inform their planning and programming for future similar interventions. It is expected that this evaluation will also be useful for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), as a major supporter of NORCAP, and to standby partner focal points in host agencies. 1.1.1 NORCAP Since its establishment in 1991, NORCAP has deployed experts to more than 9,000 missions worldwide. The NORCAP rosters contain more than 900 experienced professionals based in Norway, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America and is one of the largest standby capacities in the world. To support the scale up of UN’s relief operations in Nepal, the MFA allocated NOK 10 million to support the deployment of 20 experts for 6 months. By 31 December 2015, the NMFA grant had supported the deployment of 20 experts and almost 90 person-months of work in ten specialist areas. Deployments were also funded by other sources. In total 39 experts were deployed, 31 of which are covered by the scope of this evaluation. The first eight NORCAP experts were deployed within the first week following the earthquake. NRC/NORCAP deployments prioritised three aspects of the response; coordination, responding to urgent needs and building back better during the recovery phase. 1.1.2 The 2015 Earthquake and Humanitarian Context in Nepal An earthquake measuring 7.8 magnitude struck an area between Kathmandu and Pokhara on the morning of 25 April 2015, affecting 39 of Nepal’s 75 districts. The earthquake and aftershocks caused more than 8,400 casualties and 17,800 injuries, left some 500,000 homeless and had far- reaching impacts on livelihoods and social services. The operating environment in Nepal posed a number of challenges for international humanitarian agencies due to a combination of difficulties in accessing populations in remote areas and limited capacity of Kathmandu’s airport to support relief operations. Outdated national disaster laws and response structures created bottlenecks for delivery of relief. According to national laws, International agencies are not allowed to directly implement, but were required to work through national agencies with limited capacities. The recovery phase was also delayed since it took time for the government to establish the National Reconstruction Authority and finalise and communicate relevant policies and operational plans. Since the 2015 Nepal earthquake was of a large scale disaster, considerable surge was deployed from both internal rosters and externally from standby partners such as NORCAP. Host agencies mobilized surge staff that increased their staff by 20 – 50% in comparison with pre-disaster levels. 1.2 Methodology This evaluation was based on the OECD-DAC evaluation criteria of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, outcomes/impact and sustainability. The methodology combined a desk review of secondary data together with a series of semi-structured key informant and focus group interviews that collected quantitative and qualitative data using an interview guide based on the questions in the TOR for the evaluation. A total of 47 key informants from NRC/NORCAP (staff and deployees), UN, IOM, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and peer standby partners were interviewed. EVALUATION OF THE NRC/NORCAP 2015 NEPAL EARTHQUAKE RESPONSE | PAGE 1 Some of these interviews took place during a brief visit to Kathmandu by one of the team members and findings and recommendations were validated during a workshop at NORCAP HQ in Oslo and during subsequent conference calls involving three of the HQ standby partner focal points for host agencies. 1.3 Main Findings Based on findings from this evaluation, NORCAP was judged to have provided relevant and timely support to operational presence and deliver humanitarian assistance to populations affected by the crisis. NORCAP expert deployments were allocated amongst seven agencies, with most common functional role as part of the Camp Coordination and Camp management (CCCM) cluster led by IOM. 1.3.1 Relevance The majority of NORCAP deployees were found to have been equipped with the right attitudes, social skills and experience and were able to hit the ground running upon arrival. Since relatively few host agency staff in Nepal had experience in responding to large scale disasters and international agencies are not allowed under national laws to implement directly, NORCAP deployees who had prior experience in interagency coordination and implementing relief interventions through national agencies with limited capacities were highly valued by host agencies. 1.3.2 Efficiency Deployments were generally viewed as timely, with the first NORCAP international deployment happening within 72 hours of the disaster. A more important factor influencing timeliness was that most of the host agencies (and government authorities) took time to get organized and had difficulties managing deployments efficiently during the early phases of the response. Decisions about deployments were largely left up to host agency